CIA Funnels Hundreds of Millions to Pakistan's Spy Agency Despite Suspicions

Despite suspicions that the Pakistani intelligence agency continues to help Taliban extremists, the CIA has sent it hundreds of million of dollars since the Sept. 11 attacks because it believes the support has paid off in information about militants operating in the country, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The support for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, has been the subject of a longrunning debate within the U.S. government that has usually led to the conclusion that "there is no other game in town" when it comes to information on militants who operate in the country's tribal belt where almost every terrorist plot in this decade was hatched, the Times says.

A former senior CIA official was quoted as saying, "They gave us 600 to 700 people captured or dead...Getting these guys off the street was a good thing." Another former national security official said that, despite the suspicions about where the ISI's loyalties lie, "you've got no smoking gun from command and control that links them to the activities of the insurgents."